


The Rude Wind's Wild Lament

by shalako



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Adultery, Divorce, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied animal abuse, M/M, Milah and Gold are not good together, Slow Burn, angry young adult Neal, bisexual Gold, more explicit human abuse, pining Archie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-15 05:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16927080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shalako/pseuds/shalako
Summary: It's Christmastime in New York City. Archie Hopper has a front-row seat to Mr. Gold's failing marriage.





	1. Good King Wenceslas Looked Out

“Archie!” Neal said, flinging the door open wide. He stepped out of the way and let Archie in - the apartment was blowing out warm air, engulfing Archie immediately and dissolving the shivers he had from being outside in wintertime New York just minutes ago. Granted, he’d been outside for hours, circling past Central Park (stark and snowy) and then trudging all the way to the High Line before making his way to Neal’s apartment by subway. His feet were made of knives right now.

“It’s good to see you, Neal,” he said mildly. His eyes flickered around the apartment - at the small but well-decorated Christmas tree in the corner, the comfy-looking thrift-store couch, the small TV playing a holiday special with the volume down. He shrugged off his coat and Neal pointed him toward a row of empty hooks on the wall near the door. Only one coat hung there, made of excellent material and at least four sizes too small for Neal. Archie recognized it immediately.

“Is your dad here?” he asked, hanging his coat next to the other one. Neal grinned.

“He’s in the kitchen -- Dad! Archie’s here!”

There was no response; Neal gave Archie a sheepish smile, but Archie hadn’t really expected to hear anything. Mr. Gold had been painfully quiet for as long as Archie knew him - since Neal was in second grade. Archie slipped his shoes off and padded over to the kitchen; as soon as he stepped through the doorway, he saw Gold standing over a pot on the stove with his hair tucked behind his ears and his sweater sleeves pulled up over his hands.

He glanced at Archie, looked away, and then looked back quickly, his lips quirking up in a smile.

“Dr. Hopper?” he said. Archie grinned.

“Yeah.”

“Dad didn’t think you’d come,” said Neal matter-of-factly from the doorway. Gold shot him a reproachful look but Archie’s grin only grew wider.

“It’s a long trip,” said Gold defensively. He turned back to the stove and stirred the pot.

“I told him you two ought to carpool,” Neal said. Gold’s eyes flickered toward Archie, his face carefully guarded.

“Yeah,” said Archie, glancing away. “I couldn’t leave until today though. Had appointments scheduled.”

Neal seemed to accept that; he took a seat at the small kitchen table and gestured for Archie to join him. Archie did so, but he didn’t try to pretend he wasn’t still staring at Gold. It was rare to see Gold wearing something other than a suit, and Archie was disconcerted by how bony he really was underneath all those layers. A bandage peeked out from under Gold’s sleeve, making Archie’s stomach sink with dread.

He looked at Neal, eyebrows furrowed, and caught him looking at the bandage too. Neal turned to Archie with his eyes hooded, resignation written on his face.

“So,” Neal said, the cheerfulness of his voice at complete odds with his expression. “You wanna meet the cat?”

Archie blinked. “The--?”

“His name’s David,” Neal said. He bent over, sticking his head under the table, and came back up with an exceedingly fluffy ginger cat who stared at Archie with baleful yellow eyes.

“David Nolan,” Gold said. Archie glanced around in surprise, expecting to see Nolan somewhere in the room, before he realized that was the cat’s full name.

“Like - like the vet back home?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Gold and Neal together. Neal put David down and the cat seemed to disappear immediately; Archie wasn’t sure where he’d run off to.

“Tell him the story,” Neal said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

He started to get up but Gold waved him off silently, setting the stove to a lower heat and fetching two mugs from the cupboard.

“David’s a shelter cat,” Gold said, pouring water into a pot. “Four months ago he was an underfed kitten. Mr. Nolan implied I wouldn’t be the best caretaker for him, because he’s timid, but it wasn’t exactly my choice to adopt him in the first place. Milah wanted a cat - it’s almost eight, Neal, how about some tea instead?”

“Tea has caffeine in it too, you know,” Neal said.

“Tea is soothing,” Gold argued. “And this is the herbal, not the oolong.”

“So?”

“So it doesn’t have caffeine,” Archie cut in. “Is it chamomile?”

“Yes,” said Gold, already putting the water on to boil.

“I’ll take some, please.”

Gold nodded. “And I’ll make you some hot chocolate, Neal. You don’t need coffee before bed.”

Neal gave Archie a deadpan look and took a sip from the half-empty Red Bull on the kitchen table. “Anyway...” he prompted.

“Anyway,” Gold said, “Milah and I agreed on the name Curdie. But when I took David for his first vaccination, Mr. Nolan told me Curdie is a _girl’s name_.”

“You don’t seem the type to care about that,” Archie said, one eyebrow raised. He did not add that he was certain Gold knew more about the differences between girl names and boy names than David Nolan - he had once seen Gold read a baby names book for fun, from cover to cover.

“No,” said Gold. “But Mr. Nolan evidently is, and he annoyed me enough that, well …” He gestured toward the cat, who meowed as if on cue. “I figured this was one thing that would annoy him even more.”

Archie looked down at the cat, a smile on his face. David approached him slowly and took a seat near Archie’s chair.

“You must really like him,” Archie said, “to take him all the way here with you.”

Gold stirred the larger pot on the stove wordlessly, then took the smaller pot off as it began to boil. Neal didn’t seem to own a teapot, and Archie could tell that was the main issue on Gold’s mind as he shook tea leaves into the pot, nose wrinkled. Across the table from Archie, Neal scribbled restlessly in the margin of a discarded newspaper, his face drawn in a scowl. He tapped his pen, put it down and picked it back up again, rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.

“Actually, uh --” As Neal spoke, Gold closed his eyes, shoulders slumping. “-- David kinda lives with me now.”

Archie looked down at the cat, whose eyes were closed. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I mean, he does seem comfortable here, so …”

“Mom didn’t want him,” Neal said. Gold poured the tea into two mugs carefully, working around his bandaged hand. When the pot was empty, he set it down and gingerly picked up the mug of slightly-better quality - the one that looked like it came from Target, not Walmart - and turned toward the kitchen table. Archie met him halfway; he didn’t see Gold’s cane anywhere nearby and didn’t want to make him walk.

“We had another cat before,” Gold said lightly, getting to work on hot chocolate for Neal. “Ophelia.”

“Othello,” Neal corrected. “When I was a kid.”

“Ophelia first,” Gold agreed, “then we renamed her.”

“Him.”

“Right. Well, we never really knew what to call him,” Gold said. “One of Neal’s classmates gave him to us when he was very small and said he was a girl. He never got old enough for us to tell with any certainty.”

“Mom killed him,” Neal said, his voice holding a note of defiance. Archie sipped his tea, knowing immediately that Gold would deny this statement.

“He ran away,” said Gold flatly. Archie nodded to himself.

“Yeah, right,” said Neal. “You found him dead inside the house and you buried him really early in the morning, when I was supposed to be asleep.”

“He ran away,” Gold insisted.

“ _Dad_ ,” Neal said, “when I was a kid, you told me he got hit by a _car_. Get your story straight.”

Gold looked momentarily abashed, but hid it fairly well by turning immediately back toward the stove. “Come on, Neal,” he said, “you can’t expect me to remember what happened to every cat we’ve owned.”

“Yeah, but you loved Ophelia,” Neal said.

“Othello.”

“And we’ve only had two cats. Othello and David.”

“Right,” said Gold.

“Anyway,” said Neal, “if Mom didn’t kill Othello, why bring him up right after we talked about her making you get rid of David?”

He sounded sly and triumphant, like he’d caught Gold once and for all, but Archie knew what Gold’s argument would be before he even said it.

“Because we’re talking about _cats_ , Neal,” Gold said. “Of course I’m going to think of the one when talking about the other, we’ve only had two.”

Neal scowled down at the table. Then he looked up at Archie sneakily. “Remember when me and Dad first moved to Storybrooke?” he asked.

Gold shot him a warning look, almost certainly due to the exclusion of Milah in that sentence.

“Yes,” said Archie. “I think so. It was the same year I started at your school.”

“Yeah,” said Neal. “So, remember how, like, we hadn’t really gotten started yet, financially? Like, we were living in that old apartment above the library, and Dad was working two jobs, and none of us had even _seen_ a suit in real life?”

Gold handed Neal a mug of hot chocolate and sat down next to them. When Archie glanced at the stove, he saw that the soup had been put in the fridge and the pot had already been cleaned.

“I remember,” Archie said. He’d seen Gold around town a few times, struck by his sharp face and long hair, not realizing that he tangentially knew this man through his troublemaking eight-year-old son, a student at Archie’s school. Though he might have guessed - they had the same brown eyes and, at the time, the same skilfully-patched second-hand clothes.

“Well, as soon as we move in, Mom says she wants a puppy,” Neal said. “And like, at this point, you know, we’re already kinda in trouble, cuz we had to sell our old furniture, and Mom went ahead and bought a bunch of really expensive new stuff on credit. Plus, we’ve got to make rent, and the whole reason we moved to Storybrooke is so Mom can work on her children’s book, which takes place in a seaside town in Maine.”

“How do you remember all this stuff?” said Gold under his breath.

“I’m bright,” Neal replied. “It said so on all my report cards.”

Gold rolled his eyes.

“Anyway,” said Neal, “Mom wants a puppy. Dad says to wait at least a month, so we can get settled in and sort of figure out what we’re doing.”

“I figured,” said Gold, surprising Archie by joining the conversation, “that if we waited a month, we’d have a better idea about our financial situation. I’d have a job, most likely, and we’d know if we could afford a dog.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Archie.

“But Mom didn’t want to wait,” Neal said, leaning forward. “That weekend, she’s like, _Take me to the animal shelter,_ and her and Dad argue a little about it, but they end up going.”

“So you adopted a dog?” Archie asked.

“Nope!” said Neal. Gold grimaced. “Mom didn’t like any of them. They were all either chihuahuas or chihuahua mixes. So a few days later, she makes Dad drive her to this pet store in Bar Harbor.”

Archie winced. “Bar Harbor?”

“Yep,” said Neal.

“Oh, god. Why would you buy _anything_ in Bar Harbor?”

Neal nodded, holding up one hand as if to say _thank you, I agree_. “So Dad takes her to the pet store, and what does she ‘fall in love with’ and absolutely _need_ to have? A $600 chihuahua.”

Archie let out a long sigh.

“And of course,” said Neal, “when they get to the checkout line, Mom realizes she doesn’t have enough money in her account, and asks Dad to pay for it. And of course Dad agrees, though you can tell by his face he _really_ doesn’t want to--”

“I didn’t mind,” said Gold, convincingly mild. “I paid for the pup, she paid for all the necessities. The food, the collar …”

“Yeah, Mom spent like a hundred dollars on it, and you spent _six_ hundred,” Neal said. “Now get this, Archie - we have this dog for a week, okay, and Dad’s trying to potty-train it, but at this point he’s not home a lot, cuz he’s working for one job and simultaneously trying to network and start up as a lawyer. I’m not home a lot either, cuz I’m in school, but Mom’s at home all day cuz she’s working on her book.”

“Right,” Archie said. His thoughts kept coming back to that book; he hadn’t known Milah wanted to write, and honestly hadn’t pegged her as the type.

“So every day when Dad takes me to school,” Neal continued, “the house is spotless. Dad cleans up any messes and lets the dog out and we go to school. And every day when I come home, there’s dog poop and pee all over the place. And this is in an apartment we’re renting!”

“I’ve seen worse from my tenants,” Gold said with a sip of his tea. Archie glanced at him curiously; Neal did not acknowledge the comment.

“So when we see these messes,” he said, “Dad and I are the ones to clean them. Sometimes I’d clean them when I’d get home from school but other times I’d just get pissed and I’d take the puppy and go straight to the backyard. Then Dad would clean it up, but Mom never did. And after a week of this, Mom starts talking about how much she hates the puppy, how she just can’t stand him, because he’s always making messes.”

“He made a great deal of messes,” Gold interjected. “Perhaps we were overfeeding him. I don’t know. He was more difficult to house train than any other dog I’ve owned.”

“That’s cuz you owned those dogs before you met Mom!” said Neal, throwing up his hands. “How are you supposed to potty-train a dog if you’re sending him mixed messages like that? One owner says you gotta pee outside, the other lets you go wherever you want - it’s confusing!”

“What happened, in the end?” Archie asked. “I don’t remember you owning a dog.”

“We had him for a _month_ ,” Neal said, glowering down at his hot chocolate. “Maybe two.”

“Two,” Gold agreed.

“Mom complained the whole time. At the end of the first month, Dad begged her to give it--”

“I didn’t _beg_.”

“--to give it thirty more days, and if she still wanted to get rid of it, he would. And during the second month, she just complained more. So finally they took it to the shelter and he got adopted, like … the very next day.”

Archie nodded.

“She was super dramatic the whole way there,” Neal added viciously. “Suddenly she loved that dog more than anything. She kept crying and cuddling him while Dad drove and I just sat there. _We_ actually liked the dog, and I thought I’d get to say a big goodbye when we got to the shelter, but Mom said we had to stay in the car to make sure it didn’t get towed. _Then_ , for months afterward, if Dad and I even mentioned dogs, she’d get hysterical and yell at us, cuz ‘you know how much I miss him, how could you bring him up,’ blah blah blah.”

There was a long silence. Archie started drinking his tea in large gulps, alarmed by how cold it was all of a sudden. Gold’s was still giving off steam somehow, and he sipped it carefully. Neal had forgotten his hot chocolate.

“Bar Harbor was nice, though,” Gold said into his mug. Neal snorted.

“Yeah,” he said. “Bar Harbor was nice.” He pushed away from the table with a sigh. “I’m gonna try and bust out a few pages, if you guys don’t mind.”

“Okay,” Archie and Gold said as one, but Gold continued with,

“Neal, why don’t you show Dr. Hopper what you’re working on?”

Neal rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s, uh - it’s just a comic book,” he said. “I got a deal with Dark Horse …”

“I’d love to see it,” Archie said.

* * *

The pages taped to the wall above Neal’s desk were gorgeous - but then, he’d always been a talented artist. What Archie was truly impressed by was the organization. As a child, Neal had lost or forgotten his homework daily; as a teenager, his organization had improved somewhat, superficially, with the help of his mother, but he had more trouble completing projects and couldn’t make a plan or even an outline to save his life.

Here, Archie saw three outlines immediately - the original, a revised edition, and a more specific revised edition - as well as countless sheets of designs and thumbnails. He was pleased to see how carefully Neal plotted out the panels for each page; that had been a particular problem when Neal was sixteen and, rather ambitiously, began work on his first graphic novel.

Still, Neal seemed embarrassed more than proud. As Archie looked around, Neal ripped certain pages off the wall and shoved drawings into drawers, his cheeks flushing. None of those drawings, from what Archie could tell, were lewd or explicit - it seemed they just weren’t up to Neal’s standards.

“You’ve always been too hard on yourself,” Archie said fondly. “Do you still have that comic book from high school? The Batman one?”

“Jesus, no,” Neal said. “God, that’s embarrassing. I left it at home somewhere, it’s probably gone by now.”

Archie shrugged; that all depended on which parent had found it, if either of them had. Gold would keep it, Archie knew. He had boxes full of items from Neal’s childhood that he couldn’t stand to get rid of. Archie wasn’t sure if Milah would just get rid of the comic book or if she’d hold onto it to embarrass Neal somehow.

Archie glanced at the remaining pages covering Neal’s desk and walls; he had so many questions but couldn’t pick which one to ask first. He wanted to know about the characters, about the plot, about the title -- what it was and how Neal chose it -- about the release date.

“Is it on sale yet?” he asked finally. Neal let out a breathy laugh.

“No,” he said. “No, not yet. I-I’m still working on the second issue. I think the first one is ready, but I’m not sure yet, you know?”

“Right,” Archie said. “It looks amazing. I bet you’ll win all the awards.”

He expected Neal to laugh, but got a shy smile instead as Neal examined his own work. “I’m happy with it,” he admitted. “I think I finally found my own style, you know?”

“Definitely,” said Archie. The character designs and backgrounds were deceptively simple; on closer look, they were unbelievably complex. “Is … this hard? Doesn’t it take a long time to draw it all?”

Neal shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, I always drew really detailed stuff when I was in high school, remember?”

Archie did. He remembered a specific altercation with a history teacher who noticed Neal doodling - making intricate designs in his notebook - during class. Archie had fought long and hard, along with Neal’s English teacher, to convince Mr. Bayard that Neal was the type of person who learned better when his hands were occupied. It helped that Neal had inherited his father’s sharp mind and quick memory, and could easily answer any historical questions shot at him when he was caught doodling.

Archie opened his mouth, another one of his dozen questions about the comic book ready to spill out, but Neal looked lost in contemplation, and Archie was soon distracted anyway. He heard a meow from the next room, followed by low, nearly-inaudible words from Gold. Archie took another look at Neal, still deep in thought, and slipped away.

Gold was curled up on the couch with the cat at his feet and an iPad in his hands; it looked entirely foreign to him. Gold worried at his lip with one hand while the other - the bandaged one - hovered uncertainly over the iPad screen. He touched it carefully and then paused, his eyes flickering from one side of the screen toward the other, before slowly sliding his finger to the right.

Archie came closer and craned his neck. Gold was playing sudoku.

“I didn’t know you had a tablet,” Archie said. Gold glanced up at him, then looked at the cat, who was taking up a solid half of the couch.

“Down, David,” Gold said. When the cat ignored him, he moved to pet it. David cringed and jumped down with a baleful meow. “I _don’t_ own a tablet, in fact,” Gold said as Archie took a seat next to him. “It’s Neal’s. He downloaded a handful of apps for me - I suspect he’s got me one for Christmas and he’s trying to convince me they’re fun.”

Archie chuckled. Gold handed him the iPad and Archie looked through it, his eyes skimming over the apps. Kindle, TED Talks, a digital sketchpad, and a constellation map were squeezed in between a good dozen games Archie had seen recently in an article titled “Calming Apps to Relieve Anxiety.” And hidden amongst those was a daily-positivity app for people in abusive relationships. Archie’s eyes landed on it and stayed there; next to him, Gold went still and tense, maintaining a blank face while he held his breath.

“I love this one,” Archie said finally, pointing to one of the anxiety-relieving games. Gold relaxed instantly.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s nice.”

“You don’t have Candy Crush, though,” Archie noted with a smile. Gold snorted and took the iPad back, turning it off and tucking it into a cubby built into Neal’s homemade coffee table. Seeing an opportunity, the cat immediately jumped up and claimed Gold’s lap as a bed; Gold moved his bandaged hand out of the way and petted the cat with his other one.

“How’s Milah treating you?” Archie asked, his voice soft. Gold didn’t look up, his eyes glued to David.

“Fairly well,” he said. For a long moment, Archie just watched Gold’s fingers trailing through the cat’s fur, untangling any knots. The soft dialogue of _A Christmas Story_ was nearly drowned out by the equal amount of static put out by the TV. One room away, Archie could hear Neal shuffling around, searching for a sketchpad.

“She got me Christmas presents,” Gold said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Archie looked at him with eyes wide, unsure if he’d heard right.

“Milah did?”

“Yeah,” said Gold. He looked awfully glum about it. Archie leaned back into the cushions, contemplating this, his mind tracing back over all the years he’d known the Golds. He remembered a story Neal had written in sixth grade - the first time he was sent to Archie’s office for a disciplinary issue. It was a worryingly graphic story about a boy (named Neil, with an I, Archie recalled) who murdered both his parents after his mother assaulted his father on Christmas Day. And then he remembered the December right after Neal turned seventeen, when he and his father moved into Archie’s house after a year and a half of planning. Gold had spent that Christmas pale-faced and locked in his room, eating rarely and, Archie suspected, having panic attacks fairly often.

Archie let out a deep sigh and, without asking, lifted David off Gold’s lap and deposited him in his own. Gold didn’t protest.

“So what did she get you?” Archie asked. Gold curled up again, looking more comfortable that way.

“A sweater,” Gold said. “Two books.”

“Which books?” Archie asked.

“ _Laughter in the Dark,_ by Nabokov, and a first edition of _Nausea_.”

Archie couldn’t help raising his eyebrows in surprise. In the past, Milah’s gift-giving had always been a bit left-of-center - she got Gold things because _she_ wanted them, or she deliberately purchased items she knew he wouldn’t like, most likely out of spite. Occasionally, she made what seemed like genuine attempts at gift-giving, but those attempts were always misguided -- records by artists Gold disliked, but which Milah vaguely remembered him mentioning. Books he already had. Clothing similar to the clothes Gold wore ten years ago, instead of clothes like the ones he wore today - or clothes that _did_ fit his current tastes, but were regrettably orange.

“Was the sweater nice?” Archie asked, trying to figure out the catch in this batch of gifts.

“Very,” Gold sighed. “Irish wool. Handmade. Neither orange nor purple, and quite comfortable.”

Archie chuckled. “Well, that’s good.”

Gold picked at the seam of his trousers. “That’s not all,” he said. “The sweater, the two books, a candle --”

“A _candle_?” Archie repeated. “Was it scented?”

Gold nodded grimly. “Something autumnal. Pumpkin pie, or fallen leaves. I don’t remember.”

“She  _hates_ scented candles,” Archie said.

“I know.”

“You two have had like a million fights over this.”

“I know.”

Archie shook his head, finding himself at a loss for words. Gold let out a tiny sigh.

“She also gave me …” He cut himself off, brow furrowed and eyes shining. He bit his lip, took a breath, and started again, his words painstakingly slow. “She gave me a sketchbook and graphite pencils. And a watercolor pad and paints, and … a set of brush pens and … colored pencils, all _sorts_ of colored pencils …”

He ground the heel of his palm against his eyes, letting out another shuddering breath. Archie just watched, his heart sinking.

“She never bought those things for Neal,” Gold said. “When we were at home, she acted like he’d never shown an interest in art. And she certainly never acknowledged that I …”

He trailed off again, looking abashed.

“You’re a talented artist, yourself,” Archie said carefully. Gold gave a miniscule shrug.

“Neal gets it from his mother,” he said.

Archie had heard this all before. “Milah practices more, maybe,” he said. “She has more _time_ to practice. But if it was just Milah and Neal, then Neal would be stuck with a whole lot of undeveloped talent. He’d still be making the same mistakes he did in high school - he’d be drawing the same face on every character, and doing his arms weird. And he still wouldn’t have the patience or skill to draw backgrounds. He still wouldn’t be working with color or even shading. You’re the one who got him to actually work on those things.”

“Milah’s excellent with landscapes and color,” Gold said.

“But she’s not the one who worked on them with Neal,” Archie said patiently. Gold didn’t respond, and after a few more minutes of silence and Gold awkwardly evading his gaze, Archie changed the subject. “Did you like the gifts she gave you?”

Gold’s chest rose and fell in a deep breath. He cocked his head, staring at the wall. “She … she didn’t tell me about them. Until I left to come here. She didn’t want me to come. On my way here, she called and … told me about all the gifts she’d bought me and sort of begged me to come back home. So we could spend Christmas together. Then a few hours after I hung up, she sent me pictures of all the gifts.”

Archie hummed thoughtfully. “She wanted you to feel guilty,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Did she know you were coming to Neal’s for Christmas?” Archie asked. “Like, in advance?”

“For a few months now,” Gold said, nodding. “I told her in October. We’ve been … arguing about it on-and-off ever since.”

“Ah,” said Archie. He glanced over at the Christmas tree, watching the lights blink, and then let his gaze drift to the bookshelf. Wordlessly, Archie rose from the couch and wandered over. He always found himself examining bookshelves when he visited other people’s houses; it was an unbreakable habit.

Neal’s bookshelf consisted of college textbooks, art books, adventure books he’d liked as a kid, and a handful of nonfiction books, mostly true crime. On the bottom shelf, tucked into the corner, were five self-help books -- one on abusive relationships, one on abusive relationships between gay people, one on abusive relationships with one’s parents, one on childhood sexual abuse, and one about depression. Archie regarded them with hooded eyes and then chanced a look back at Gold.

Gold met his gaze steadily, face blank. “Neal’s always had odd tastes in books,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Archie. For a moment, he and Gold just stared at each other; then Gold stood slowly, uncurling himself from the sofa and grabbing his cane.

“Come on, David,” he muttered to the cat; then, glancing at Archie, “I’m going to bed.”

Archie nodded. “Okay.”

It was only when he was alone an hour later - the TV still on, the lights in Neal and Gold’s bedrooms off - that he realized there were no blankets or pillows in the living room. Archie changed into his pajamas and silently debated sneaking into either Neal or Gold’s room to steal a blanket. In the end, he just pulled on a sweater and settled down on the couch, deciding he was warm enough to go without.

His thoughts circled back, inevitably, to the book on abuse between gay people. He couldn’t figure out why Neal owned it -- he was certain Neal was straight, and even if he wasn’t, he wasn’t in an abusive relationship with another man. But neither was Gold -- it was possible, Archie supposed, that the book was for a friend.

He sighed and burrowed deeper into the couch. He tried to picture Gold with another man -- it had always been a shock to him that Gold was straight, and he supposed it was possible that he was wrong -- based on one specific memory he did his best to forget -- and it was also possible that Milah was, in some way or another, queer. That would make them a queer couple, and would explain the book, but …

Archie closed his eyes. But that possibility brought with it the possibility that Gold would … and now Archie’s heart was fluttering, full of old fantasies he’d buried years ago, when he found out Gold was married.

He needed to get to sleep.


	2. On the Feast of Stephen

Archie woke the next morning with his body warm and toasty and his face practically burning. He opened his eyes and was confused for a moment when all he could see was a vast expanse of blue. Then he realized his pillow was giving off heat, and then he remembered he hadn’t had a pillow when he went to sleep and moved his head a little, eyes swiveling downward. His pillow had the same checked pattern of Gold’s pajama pants.

“Gold?” Archie asked.

“Oh,” said Gold from above him. “Don’t move, dear. I’m balancing a plate on your head.”

Archie groaned and sat up anyway, earning a reproachful look as Gold snatched a plate of french toast away. He found himself entangled in a thick quilt and did his best to scoot to the other side of the couch, his thighs touching Gold’s.

“Did you bring me a blanket?” he asked. Gold hummed noncommittally.

“Never let it be said I don’t know how to host,” he said. “Here.”

He handed Archie the plate; Archie took it and the fork and dug in.

“Is Neal up yet?” he asked.

“No,” said Gold. “Are you serious? It’s six in the morning.”

Archie glanced out the window and grinned, only now realizing it was still dark outside. He took another bite of french toast and handed the plate back to Gold so he could grab the TV remote.

“I bet Mr. Rogers is on,” he said. He pressed a button and the TV fizzled slowly into life, presenting a staticky picture of the morning news. Archie changed the channel, searching for PBS. He ignored Gold’s dramatic groan.

“I can’t stand Mr. Rogers.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Archie. He found PBS and settled back, waiting for the commercial to end. “What did you watch as a kid if it wasn’t Mr. Rogers?”

Gold wrinkled his nose and sat back against the arm of the couch, kicking Archie in the leg. “Pornography,” he said.

“Get real.”

“Not Mr. Rogers,” Gold conceded. “Neal watched it when he was small. I thought it was condescending.”

“You’d rather he watched documentaries,” Archie guessed, eyes glued to the screen as the commercials ended. To his dismay, Mr. Rogers didn’t come on - it was a newer, animated show Archie had never heard of. He started flipping through channels.

“Check to see if the parade’s on,” Gold suggested. Archie nodded, then put the remote down and looked at Gold as he processed that sentence.

“The parade,” he repeated. Gold nodded. “Which parade?”

“The Thanksgiving one,” said Gold. Archie stifled a smile.

“Mr. Gold, what month do you think it is?”

Gold hesitated, looking up from his plate. “Is Thanksgiving not in December?”

Archie couldn’t contain his laughter; he was aware of the dirty look Gold gave him, but he couldn’t stop.

“You can’t expect me to remember all these ridiculous holidays,” Gold said.

“You’ve been living here since Neal was seven,” said Archie. “I mean, I can at least expect you to be in the ballpark - quick, when’s Valentine’s Day?”

“Valentine’s Day,” said Gold with his nose in the air, “is not solely an American holiday.”

“And it’s on …?”

“The fourteenth of February,” said Gold. “As if I’d forget that. My life depends solely on remembering Valentine’s Day, Milah’s birthday, and our anniversary.”

Archie chuckled. “Right. Good point.”

He shifted on the couch, trying to get into a comfortable position. Gold’s feet were still pressed up against his thigh, and when Archie moved, Gold shifted them into the other man’s lap without thinking about it. He handed Archie the plate again.

“Finish it off,” Gold said. “I’m full.”

Archie ate the last few bites, his eyes on the TV but his thoughts far away. When Neal was eight years old, Archie had been just starting at Storybrooke Elementary. He was the assistant counselor; by the time Neal was twelve, Archie had been the only counselor, and by the time Neal was seventeen, Archie had been in his last year working at the school, transitioning into private practice. He was possibly the only person in Storybrooke, Milah and Neal excluded, who could claim to be close to Gold, but it still stunned him a little when they had moments like this - both of them in their pajamas, Gold’s feet in his lap, sharing breakfast (and a fork).

He thought back, trying to remember when they had become friends. Gold had started gaining traction around town when Neal was in sixth grade - the same year he wrote that awful story in school about killing Milah. Archie remembered meeting Gold in the grocery store; he’d always had a distinctive look, even when he was dressed in shoddy clothes, but this had been Archie’s first time seeing Gold in a tailored suit.

Gold had a shopping basket at his feet, half-filled with cooking supplies, and was struggling to reach a bag of flour on the top shelf. Archie had swooped in to help with uncharacteristic quickness, swiping a bag and grinning at Gold, charmed by the shy smile he received in return. He’d been certain Gold was gay, and when he went home that night, his heart was fluttering like crazy. He wanted to see Gold again - fantasized about running into him at Granny’s and getting coffee, or meeting each other on the pier one night near sunset.

He’d met Gold again two days later when he called Neal’s parents about the Christmas story. Both of them had come in; Milah was arch and refined, like Gold had been on their first meeting, but Gold had seemed small and pensive, wringing his hands and staying quiet while Milah did the talking. He was only a few inches shorter than Milah, but he seemed dwarfed by her.

“So,” said Archie, his eyes flickering from Gold to Milah. “Mr. and Mrs. Gold, I, uh, I called you here to discuss a … a story Neal wrote, for English class.”

He had five copies of the story at that point, and he handed one each to Milah and Mr. Gold. They took it and read; Milah looked unimpressed and finished quickly, putting the paper down on Archie’s desk with evident distaste. Gold took longer to read, his eyebrows furrowing. He finally looked up, wide eyes moving from Archie to Milah.

“Neal wrote this?” he asked.

“Ira,” said Milah, her eyes closing in irritation. “Pay attention.”

Gold grimaced. “It’s just … hard to believe,” he said. He glanced down at his copy of the story, noticed Milah’s copy laying on the desk, and placed his down on top of hers.

“Has Neal …” Archie scratched the back of his hand, shifting nervously in his seat. “Has Neal ever shown a … a fascination with violence, before today? Does he -- for example, does he play violent video games, or watch violent shows?”

“Neal doesn’t watch television,” said Milah crisply. Archie noticed the glance Gold gave her at that before looking back down at his hands.

“Neal … has a fascination with dark themes,” said Gold. “He likes horror films and adores Halloween. And last year, he began writing these … short stories, in the first person. They usually ended in death. Guillotines and car crashes and the like. But this - it doesn’t extend to weaponry or anything of the sort. He’s not obsessed with guns. He’s more - he likes the Tim Burton brand of darkness, not the Eli Roth.”

Archie raised his eyebrows. “It is notable,” he said, “that Neal’s story doesn’t feature any weapons, other than the knife used by … the mother.” He barely stopped himself from naming Mrs. Gold, preferring to keep the characters nameless, to divorce them from Neal’s real family as much as possible. “When Neal’s main character kills her, it’s barely mentioned. He doesn’t specify how she is killed. This tells me that Neal’s story is focused more on his feelings of anger than on a desire to commit violence.”

“Neal’s no more angry than any other teenager,” said Milah.

“Well,” said Archie, “with all respect, Mrs. Gold, our other students aren’t turning in stories like this to their teachers.”

Milah curled her lip; Mr. Gold opened his mouth and then closed it again, not once meeting Archie’s eyes.

“Is there any reason you can think of,” said Archie, “that Neal might be so angry?”

Mr. and Mrs. Gold looked anywhere but at each other. Milah clasped her hands and then pulled them apart slowly.

“I think it’s obvious,” she said. “He’s a twelve-year-old boy. He’s just hit puberty. Every child has mood swings at that time -- I did, and I’m sure --” She gestured at her husband. “--Ira did as well.”

Gold glanced at Archie warily, checking to see if he bought that. Archie didn’t.

“Sometimes,” said Archie delicately, “anger issues such as these can be caused by … issues at home. Parental arguments, or financial trouble--”

“Excuse me?” said Milah sharply.

“Milah --” said Gold.

“ _Ira_ ,” she said. Gold’s mouth clamped shut and he ducked his head. Milah was staring at Archie in shock and offense. “How dare you--”

“Milah, he’s just trying to help --”

Milah pulled away as Gold tried to touch her arm, first leaning to the side and then standing up and storming away, the door slamming behind her. Gold stayed where he was, his cheeks flushed.

“Sorry,” he murmured, staring down at the floor. “I -- Neal -- he wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’m sure of it.”

“If it counts for anything, I’m sure of that, too,” said Archie. “But we have to treat this carefully, you understand.”

“Right,” said Gold. He glanced at the story on the desk before him and then looked away with a heavy sigh. “Right.”

“Mr. Gold,” said Archie, “are there any issues at home you can think of?”

Gold rubbed the back of his neck. “I -- well, there are some arguments, yes. But it’s gotten better lately. And - and Milah would never --” He chuckled nervously, his eyes landing on Neal’s story. “She would never stab me.”

“I’m sure,” said Archie, hoping he sounded the part. “Still, it’s strange -- I mean no offense, but -- it’s unusual to read a story where the mother hurts the father. Most kids, if they were making something up, they would copy what they see on TV and in books. That is, they’d write about an abusive father. The fact that Neal chose the mother -- well, it implies that he isn’t just copying popular tropes, and that means he sees Mrs. Gold as the aggressor.”

“Milah is not violent,” said Gold firmly. “Neal is … imaginative. That’s all.”

“Well,” said Archie, but he decided to abandon the argument before it went any further. “Well, why don’t you tell me about the arguments,” he said instead. “Does Neal overhear them?”

Gold bit his lip. “Yes,” he said. “Almost all of them, I’m afraid. There are a few quieter ones that he wouldn’t have heard, but for the most part …”

“Do these fights … ever get … physical?” asked Archie. He was painfully aware that he had lowered his voice, worried Milah might be outside to hear him say it. Gold gave a half-shrug, casting his eyes away.

“Some -- sometimes,” he said. “Some -- now and then, we -- it’s small things only, just … small things.”

“Like …?”

Gold’s face colored. “Such as … well, such as an occasional … open-palmed strike. Small things.”

“Right,” said Archie. “That …” He shuffled his papers. “That doesn’t sound small to me.”

“It is,” Gold insisted, but his voice was quiet.

“If Neal is witnessing physical violence,” said Archie, “I think it explains his anger, don’t you? Obviously, to Neal, this isn’t a small thing.”

Gold glared at him, his mouth a thin line. “Neal hasn’t been hurt.”

“He doesn’t need to _be_ hurt to feel bad about it,” said Archie. He found himself on the verge of losing his patience and forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down. Gold wasn’t being overly difficult, and Archie thought, _I’m gonna need a lot of practice before I get into therapy._  “What were your parents like, Mr. Gold?” Archie asked, trying a different route. “Did they fight a lot? Were they ever violent?”

For a while, he thought Gold wouldn’t answer. The other man just stared at him, his expression guarded, his posture rigid and hands still. Finally, just as Archie was about to move on, Gold nodded.

“They were?” Archie asked. Gold nodded again, his eyes flitting away. “And it didn’t make you feel angry at all?”

Gold sucked in a deep breath, still looking at the wall instead of Archie, still glaring. “That’s different,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it wasn’t just an occasional heated argument or slap,” Gold said, finally meeting Archie’s eyes. His face was inscrutable, lips just barely parted. “Neal has the right to be angry, I don’t deny that. Any child would be angry. But Milah and I argue no more than any other married couple.”

Archie fiddled with his pen, considering Gold’s words. “Do you believe that Neal is an unusually angry child?” he asked.

“No,” said Gold, staring at Archie like he knew Archie was going to spring a trap and was just wearily curious to see what it was.

“So if you and Milah argue just as much as other couples,” said Archie, “and Neal is no more angry than other twelve-year-olds, why is Neal the only kid writing stories about his mother killing his father? Why is he the only one writing stories about _himself_ killing his mother?”

“I don’t --” Gold pressed his hands against his eyes again, his mouth tight with frustration. Archie watched him sympathetically. “I don’t understand it,” he said finally. “Neal has … expressed his anger to me, once or twice. About our situation. Perhaps … it’s possible he feels I’m not doing anything to solve it. It’s possible this is … both an expression of anger and a plea for assistance. From his teachers, or from you.”

Archie’s eyebrows shot up, and he was sure they were about to have a breakthrough.

“But there’s no need for assistance,” Gold finished, and Archie carefully masked his disappointment. “There’s nothing to be fixed.”

“I see,” said Archie. He wasn’t sure what else to say; he looked down at his desk, at the papers scattered across it, and searched his mind for anything he might have learned in college which applied to this situation. He was sure something similar had been discussed, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall it.

“I’ll talk to Neal,” said Gold earnestly. “But I don’t think -- I don’t know. If I had done something like this at his age, I wouldn’t have liked to discuss it with my parents. I’d have clammed up until they dropped the issue.”

That was a fair point; Archie had only been working at the school for a few years, but he’d noticed that teens preferred talking to strangers over talking to their parents about sensitive issues -- even the kids with good parents.

“I can talk to him first, then,” Archie offered. “If he says anything … worrying, I’ll contact you. Does that sound good?”

Gold nodded. He grabbed his cane and stood, then froze before he stepped away, his face twisted into an odd, contemplative expression.

“If --” he started, then cut himself off, biting his lip. “If anything should come up …”

He lifted a pen from the cup on Archie’s desk and pulled a piece of scrap paper from his pocket; Archie watched as Gold carefully tore off part of the paper and etched a phone number onto the surface before handing it over.

“My work number,” Gold said. “If you call home … Milah has fragile nerves these days. She can’t abide the sound of the phone.”

Archie nodded, not taking his eyes off Gold, and accepted the piece of paper. Gold made his way to the door.

“Stay safe,” Archie said.

Gold didn’t respond.


	3. When the Snow Lay Round About

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Tis a flashback

There was something soothing about scenic little towns like this. The cottages, the rocky beaches and wooden docks, the sound of seagulls and gentle waves. It was cold, and Gold certainly wish he’d brought a hat with him, but otherwise it was a perfect day.

Well, except he wasn’t sure where Milah was.

“Up,” Neal demanded, standing on tiptoe to try to see over the railing.

“You’re ten years old,” Gold admonished. “Surely you can think of something better to say than ‘up.’”

Neal rolled back his head and let a puff of air out, his cheeks red from the cold. “Father,” he said, copying Milah’s accent, “would you please be so kind as to lift me upward, so that I might view the sea?”

Gold lifted him without a word; Neal’s feet immediately wedged into a space between boards, and his mittened hands grasped the top of the rail, looking over the side into the ocean just a few feet below. There was a tiny yellow dinghy tied to the dock, swaying in the water, and a fluffy seal pup was resting inside it.

“ _God_ ,” Neal breathed. “They’re so cute when they’re not all wet and slimey.”

Gold silently agreed. He leaned over to look at the pup again and then looked back, his eyes tracking their way from shop to shop along the pier, hoping to catch a glance of Milah. She’d gone off on her own almost as soon as Gold parked the car, leaving him alone to re-tie Neal’s scarf and make sure he hadn’t somehow taken off his sweater during the car ride.

She’d said she wanted to work on her book, so she was either holed up in a coffee shop or she was down on the beach somewhere, kneeling uncomfortably on the rocks and trying to draw. It was hard to tell; sometimes Milah came down here for the atmosphere, because it helped her write, and sometimes she came down here for the scenery. Either way, it was so cold Gold didn’t believe she’d be able to hold a pencil for very long.

His eyes landed on a coffee shop he and Neal had already passed, and even though he knew Milah wasn’t in there (maybe _because_ he knew Milah wasn’t in there), he lifted Neal up and away from the rail, setting him back down on the ground and speaking above his protests.

“Fancy some hot chocolate?” he asked.

Neal’s mouth opened and closed; he was clearly torn between watching the seal pup and this new treat.

“She’s sleeping,” Gold said, nodding toward the pup in the dinghy. “She’ll still be there when we get out. We’ll just go inside to warm up right fast and then--”

“Okay!” Neal said, already running toward the shop. Gold shook his head and went after him.

There was something nice about scenic towns like this. The pervasive warmth of a coffee shop after stepping in from the cold; the feel of a warm mug of coffee between your hands. But Gold couldn’t get rid of the nagging feeling of dread he got whenever Milah stormed off like this; he tried to figure out what he had done on the car ride up here to make her leave so quickly, without a word, without even telling him where she’d be or when she’d like to leave.

Gold sipped his coffee; across from him, Neal was lowering his mug of hot chocolate, whipped cream smeared on his upper lip. Gold reached over the booth for a napkin and, without thinking, grabbed the little shaker labeled “Cinnamin” and poured some into Neal’s cup.

“Thanks,” Neal said.

“Hold still,” Gold said, trying very hard not to accidentally shove the napkin into Neal’s mouth. “And stop talking, please.”

Neal closed his eyes and went as still as a statue as Gold wiped the whipped cream away.

“There,” Gold said, leaning back. Neal sipped his hot chocolate more carefully this time, mindful of the whipped cream, and gave an exaggeratedly happy hum when he tasted the cinnamon.

“Perfection,” Neal said, once again copying Milah’s accent. Gold couldn’t suppress a smile. “Absolute perfection, Ira, I simply don’t know how you do it.”

“Don’t call me Ira,” Gold said, but he was still smiling.

“It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Please,” said Gold. “All my friends call me Dad.”

Neal huffed out a laugh and set down his hot chocolate for a moment to fiddle with his scarf. “Where _is_ Mom, anyway?” he asked. “Why’d she run off so fast?”

Gold’s smile disappeared. “I don’t know,” he said. “Eager to get to work, I suppose.”

“Nah,” said Neal dismissively, sending a dagger straight through Gold’s gut. “She was mad at us. She’s _always_ mad about something -- I bet it was cuz I spilled my Cheez-Its in the car.”

“She hardly even noticed that,” said Gold. He stared glumly into his coffee. “I think it was because -- well -- it was probably just something I said.”

He was horribly sure that he’d just figured out what it was, and he didn’t want to tip Neal off. Halfway through the trip, they’d stopped at a gas station, where Milah had used the bathroom and Gold had given into Neal’s pleas and bought him a go-cup of Cheez-Its. They’d been in the car alone for a minute or so afterward, waiting for Milah, and Neal had asked -- ever-so-sweetly -- if they could listen to Dad’s tape instead of Mom’s.

'Mom’s tape' was a mix of all Milah’s favorite songs, and it was what they’d been listening to on repeat since they left Storybrooke. 'Dad’s tape' was something Gold had found in a box of old possessions when he was cleaning out a dead man’s apartment for extra cash, years back. It was an old cassette stuffed with songs vaguely familiar to Gold, all of which Neal had never heard before. Frankie Laine, Englebert Humperdinck, Lulu, Lynn Anderson. Neal loved it; they listened to it whenever they were alone in the car.

But Gold never chose the music when he drove with Milah. It was an unspoken rule; they’d argued about it maybe once or twice when they were just dating, before Gold realized it wasn’t worth the effort. He wasn’t sure what made him put the tape in; in the back of his mind, he’d known it would make Milah mad, but at the same time, he'd known it would make Neal's smile, and he hadn't so much weighed those two against each other as given into weakness.

“Dad,” said Neal suddenly, startling Gold out of his thoughts. “Would it be okay if I got a cookie?”

He pointed toward the front of a shop, where a youth behind the counter was pulling a whole rack of fresh biscuits out of the oven. Gold shifted, surreptitiously pulling out his wallet and checking it below the table, where Neal couldn’t see.

“Er…” he said.

“I have five bucks from shoveling Mr. Beasley's driveway,” Neal said hopefully. “I can pay for it myself.”

“Oh,” said Gold. He was staring at the lone twenty-dollar bill in his wallet, trying to figure out if Neal _needed_ to buy the treat himself. There were sandwiches in a little plastic cooler in the car, but if they couldn’t find Milah soon, they might end up staying till dinnertime. “Well,” said Gold eventually, “you really shouldn’t be eating so many sweets -- the crackers, and then the hot chocolate, and now a biscuit--”

“Cheez-Its aren’t sweets,” Neal protested. "They're savory."

“-- but I’ll make you a deal,” Gold finished, tucking his wallet away. His mind was far away, trying to figure out how expensive all the seafood shops they’d passed were. “You can buy a biscuit, and we can stop at the sweets shop down the way, too, but you have to wait to eat it all until the ride home. That way we don’t need to buy any snacks.”

And if they were out late and Gold couldn’t afford dinner, Neal wouldn’t go hungry.

“Okay!” said Neal brightly. He slid out of the booth and hurried to the counter; Gold watched him speak to the cashier, gesturing toward the cookies as he spoke. There were days when Neal reminded Gold painfully of himself; he could remember having a very similar conversation with his own father, though the treat in question had been a can of green beans instead of a biscuit. Gold’s responses -- his happy demeanor -- had been the same as Neal’s, but ten-year-old Neal was far more outgoing than Gold had ever been and ever would be. At Neal’s age, Gold would have rather gone hungry than personally ask the cashier for a biscuit.

He got that from Milah, Gold supposed. He leaned over the table and peeked into Neal’s mug to see how much hot chocolate was left, then sat back again when he spotted Neal hurrying over with a brown paper bag in his hand.

“I got one chocolate chip,” Neal said with a toothy grin, “and one snickerdoodle, for you.”

Gold blinked at him; Neal reached into the bag and pulled out a snickerdoodle, as promised, and handed it to Gold.

“I’d say you have to wait for the car ride home,” said Neal with a slyness he’d almost certainly copied from a movie villain, “but I don’t think I’m allowed to order you around. Plus you didn’t get any snacks at the gas station like Mom and me so you gotta be hungry.”

“I’ll save it for later,” Gold said with a grin, handing the biscuit back. Neal gave him a doubtful look but tucked the cookie away in the bag nonetheless. “Now finish your hot chocolate,” Gold said.

They wandered out of the coffee shop ten minutes later and Neal ran toward the railing immediately, stopping halfway to turn back and shove the paper bag into Gold’s hands before sprinting off again. He climbed up the railing and peeked over; Gold could see just enough of Neal’s face to catch his enormous smile when Neal caught sight of the seal pup.

“She’s still here, Dad!” Neal hollered. Gold made his way across the pier and looked down at the swaying dinghy.

“So she is,” he said. As he watched, the pup stretched and yawned before sinking back into a deep sleep. Gold couldn’t suppress a stab of jealousy; he’d had insomnia since he was at least Neal’s age. He could still remember his aunts insisting, “It’s not insomnia; you just have trouble sleeping.” As a young adult, he’d soon figured out that no sleeping pill would help -- the only time he could guarantee sleep was if he went to bed in broad daylight. Say, ten a.m.

Gold reached into his coat pocket, searching for a rolled-up bag of butterscotch candies he’d bought a few weeks ago. He popped one into his mouth and handed another to Neal, who took it with a quiet “Thank you,” never taking his eyes off the seal. Gold was always searching for something to replace cigarettes; in ten years, he’d gone through mints, lollies, gum, and toothpicks. Still, he couldn’t quite figure out what drove him to smoking -- er, substitute-smoking -- so often.

“We should take a picture,” Neal said decisively, looking up from the pup to stare at Gold with wide eyes. “So we can show Mom later.”

“Your mum’s the one with the camera,” Gold said.

“Then we should go get it from her,” Neal said. He hopped down from the railing and looked around as if Milah might suddenly show up.

“If we’re going to get her, shouldn’t we just show her the pup?” asked Gold.

“No,” said Neal, striding back toward the shops. Gold gave the dinghy one last glance before following. “She’s already mad at us, so she’s not gonna want to follow us anywhere. But we need to find her either way, because otherwise we’ll have to go home without her. And then she’ll be even _more_ angry.”

Gold’s footsteps faltered for a moment.

“And then,” said Neal, scrunching up his face and squaring his shoulders as he attempted to mimic Gold’s Scottish brogue, “if we dinnae find her, an’ we go hame withoot her, ah willnae have a mither at aw--”

“Quit that,” said Gold, thumping Neal on the shoulder. Neal grinned up at him, looking ready to start again, and Gold deflected by pointing to the candy store on the corner. “Look, there’s the sweet shop. We may as well start there; how much of your snow-shoveling money is left?”

“Three dollars,” said Neal. “And a quarter.”

“Right,” said Gold. “Well, let’s see what we can get for three dollars and a quarter, then.”

* * *

Milah was in none of the coffee shops, nor was she down on the beach. Gold and Neal had walked the entire pier three times and Gold’s leg was killing him; he gripped his cane tightly in one hand and held onto Neal’s bag of mixed sweets with the other, and grimly reminded himself that Milah couldn’t possibly hide forever. No matter how angry she was.

“Neal,” said Gold lightly when a particularly bad pain shot up his leg, “are you hungry?”

It was two in the afternoon, they’d been walking forever, and Neal hadn’t eaten anything since his Cheez-Its this morning.

“A little,” he said bravely.

“Well,” said Gold, “I’ve got an idea. Mum must be feeling hungry as well, don’t you think? And there’s sandwiches in the car. So why don’t we stop by it for a bit, you can fill up, maybe we’ll see your mum there--”

Neal had already swerved away from the pier, heading toward the crowded parking lot. He stopped a few feet in, mindful of Gold’s limp, and waited for him to catch up.

“I wouldn’t give a shit either way, if we find her or not,” said Neal, his voice a bright little chirp bouncing off the cars.

“Neal,” said Gold. He paused quickly, trying to figure out whether he wanted to scold Neal for saying ‘shit’ or for saying he didn’t care about Milah. “Language,” he said eventually.

“I wouldn’t give a _damn_ either way, if we find her or not,” Neal said.

“ _Neal_.”

“Well, it’s true, I don’t,” said Neal. Gold took a few steps to the side until he was right up against the railing that divided the parking lot from the sea. He made a big show of dangling Neal’s bag of sweets over the water. “Hey!” Neal cried, zipping between the cars to get to Gold. “I bought those fair and square!”

He grabbed hold of Gold’s lapels and used them as leverage to climb up his legs, snatching the bag from Gold’s hand. Gold tried his hardest not to laugh as Neal jumped down again.

They resumed their walk in temporary silence. Neal moved slowly; he had the bag of candy open now and was peering down into it as he walked.

“You wouldn’t want to lose Mum,” Gold said eventually, wording it as a statement and not the question it truly was.

Neal made a noncommittal noise. “She hits you a lot,” he said. Gold put a hand on Neal’s shoulder and steered him out of the way of someone’s parked scooter.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Gold said, then thought of a better deflection. “It’s all in jest.”

“It does so hurt,” Neal said. He fished a peppermint disc out of the bag and held it up. “Look, your favorite.”

Gold took the peppermint disc, nonplussed. “Thank you,” he said, out of politeness more than anything else. Neal was always trying to guess Gold’s favorite type of sweet, and in ten years he hadn’t gotten it right yet. He put the mint in his pocket, automatically stuffing it into the balled-up bag of butterscotch discs.

“Remember when I was little,” said Neal suddenly, “and we went to the store and you got me a bag of peppermint sticks?”

“Sugar sticks,” said Gold. The correction was automatic and not very important. He shook his head at himself. “Yes, I remember.”

“Those were _delicious_ ,” said Neal. “I felt like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Gold smiled. They’d read that book together last year. “Are you trying to subtly tell me you want more sugar -- er, more peppermint sticks?” he asked.

“No,” said Neal. “I mean, yeah. But that’s not my point.” His voice became a bit quieter, more cautious and uncertain than it had been in a while. “Remember how I put them in a jar?”

Gold’s smile vanished. “Yes.”

“And Mom threw it at you?” Neal said, going quieter still. Gold looked away, pretending to scan the parking lot for Milah. He swallowed hard.

“Yes.”

“She totally knocked you out,” said Neal flatly. Although he certainly felt too old to hold his dad’s hand, he reached up and grabbed onto Gold’s sleeve, holding it tightly as they walked. “You were out for ages,” he said.

“I was out for maybe three seconds,” Gold said. He’d spotted their car and gently pushed Neal toward it. “And she hadn’t meant to throw it at me.”

“Bullcrap,” said Neal. “You guys were arguing.”

“She was very excited,” said Gold evenly. “The jar slipped from her hand.”

Sulkily, Neal let go of Gold’s sleeve and fell back several paces. “Whatever.”

Milah wasn’t at the car. Gold unlocked it with a sigh and pulled the cooler from the back, handing a single plastic-wrapped sandwich to Neal. He’d made the sandwiches this morning and was relieved to find the bread still dry.

Neal took a few bites, an angry spark still in his eyes, and said, “I’m just saying, I’ve never accidentally thrown something when _I’m_ mad.”

Gold didn’t respond. His tongue suddenly tasted ashy and he pulled the peppermint disc from his pocket, popping it into his mouth.

The taste didn’t go away.


	4. Deep and Crisp and Even

Neal left for the day shortly after waking up, with plans to visit his girlfriend and take her to the park. This left Gold and Archie alone together, both of them a little sleepy, sitting around the kitchen table with a pack of cards.

“Neal has a PlayStation,” Gold remarked out of nowhere, his chin resting on his hand. Archie glanced up at him.

“You wanna play a video game?”

“Oh, no,” said Gold quickly, examining his cards with renewed focus. “Of course not.”

Archie looked at the pile of upturned cards on the table between them and then at his own hand. There were two other sets of cards lying face-down, one by Archie’s elbow and the other next to Gold’s. They were attempting to play Hearts with just the two of them.

“You wanna see a card trick?” Archie asked.

Gold seemed deeply uninterested, but he pushed his cards to Archie in silent acquiescence. Archie shuffled them three times and then turned them over, separating them into piles of four. Gold watched with one eyebrow raised, looking more and more intrigued the longer Archie worked.

Finally, with all the cards separated into orderly stacks, Archie set about messing them up again, putting them into a single pile seemingly at random. When he was done, he cleared his throat, and Gold sat back.

“Prepare to be amazed,” said Archie. He grabbed a card off the top of the pile and turned it over with a flourish. “You have these two friends, Big Joe and Little Joe.”

He turned the next card over as well, showing Gold that both of them were threes - one of clubs and one of diamonds.

“Big Joe’s throwing a little party,” Archie said, “so he asks his buddy Little Joe, ‘Little Joe, why don’t you run out and find some guests?’”

He put the three of clubs back on the pile, face-down, and held the deck out to Gold.

“Cut it,” he said.

Dutifully, Gold cut the cards. Archie put them back together. He slid the top four cards into his hand and turned them over, speaking rapidly, repeating the move over and over again.

“Little Joe went down one block, two blocks, three blocks, four blocks…”

Abruptly, the deck spat out a three of clubs.

“...and then he came back,” said Archie. “Big Joe said--”

“Hold it,” said Gold, eyes sweeping over the discarded cards. Archie ignored him and swept the discards back into the pile with false carelessness.

“Big Joe said, ‘Well, Little Joe, did you find the guys?’ And Little Joe said, ‘Sure did, Big Joe. Four guys loaded to the hilt--” Archie turned the top four cards of the deck over, revealing four kings. “--and ready to party.’”

Gold said nothing, expressionless.

“Big Joe said, ‘Wow, Little Joe, where’d you find these guys?’ And Little Joe said, ‘Well, they were all at the same place.’” Archie flipped the next three cards over as he spoke. “Four-six-eight Broadway Street.”

Gold made an amused noise, his eyes following the four, six, and eight of clubs that Archie had discarded.

“‘Thanks, Little Joe,’” said Archie, turning over a two of clubs. “‘Here’s a couple of bucks for doing that for me. But listen, this place is kind of a sausage fest. Why don’t you go find us some babes?’”

He put the three of clubs back on the pile, facedown, and once more held the deck out for Gold to cut. Gold did so without a word, a smile tugging at his lips. He watched Archie put the deck back together.

Archie spoke and moved quickly, turning over cards in groups of four. “Little Joe went down one block, two blocks, three blocks, three houses, and then he came back.”

He tossed the three of clubs down and quickly swept the other cards back into the deck.

“The eight of hearts,” Gold said suddenly. He looked up at Archie with his eyes gleaming. “That’s how you know where he is in the deck. You set the cards up in a specific order, and the very last card in the game is going to be eight of hearts. No matter how I cut the deck, the three of clubs is going to be after the eight of hearts. That’s how you know when it’s going to come back.”

Archie sat back and let the cards drop to the table. He was fighting with himself over whether to smile or scowl.

“You know, my mom did this trick for me hundreds of times,” he said, “refusing to tell me how it worked. It took me years to get it.”

Gold shrugged with one shoulder and reached out for the deck Archie had left on the table. He turned it over and thumbed through the cards.

“Little Joe goes to four-six-eight Broadway Street every time,” Gold remarked. “And Big Joe gives him two dollars each time, as well -- what are the aces for? And this jumble of numbers at the end?”

Archie snatched the deck back and shuffled it. “You’ll never find out,” he said. He shuffled it again, and this time Gold reached out and took the cards away. He shuffled them easily, forming an elegant bridge. The cards fit naturally into his long, nimble fingers.

“When I was eight,” Gold said as he shuffled, “my dad was late coming home from work, so I sat on the floor for hours with a deck of cards, practicing the bridge.”

He made another bridge, letting the cards slot rapidly into place. Archie had to admit Gold handled the cards impressively, better than any of Marco’s poker buddies. Gold shuffled them seven times before letting them slide out of his hand, back into the box. They both looked at each other, and then at the clock.

“What kind of PlayStation games does Neal have?” Archie asked.

Gold snorted. “We’re not that desperate for entertainment yet.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Archie. “I’m killer at Mortal Kombat. Does he have Mortal Kombat?”

“I have no clue what Neal has,” said Gold, which wasn’t entirely true, as several of Neal’s games were gifts from Gold in the first place. He got up from the table, pulled his cardigan tighter around him, and approached a chipped old Rudolph ornament Neal had hung over the sink. Gold turned it gently, untangling the string.

“It’s not too cold outside,” Archie said, glancing out the window. It had been snowing earlier, but then the snow had turned to rain, and now the rain was gone, too. “We can walk down to Central Park. You know, I’ve never been able to find the statue of Balto? I look for it every time I’m here.”

Gold turned and gave Archie a blank look.

“Balto, from the movie,” Archie said.

“I know who Balto is,” said Gold. “I didn’t realize there was a statue here,”

“Well, if you think you’re up for the walk, we should go find it,” said Archie. He grabbed the book Gold was reading ( _No Longer Human_ , Osamu Dazai) off the table and stacked it on top of his own ( _Musicophilia_ , Oliver Sacks). “Grab your coat. If you’re good, I’ll let you ride the horses.”

Gold let out a startled bark of laughter, one hand flying up to cover his mouth. A warm smile spread across Archie’s face and Gold turned away, feeling flushed and suddenly incapable of meeting Archie’s eyes.

“Let me get dressed first,” he said.


	5. Brightly Shone the Moon That Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Tis a flashback

“Here,” said Archie, handing Gold a small, wrapped box. Mr. Gold didn’t take it; he kept one hand on his cane and the other in his pocket, and stared at the box hard.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

They stood on the corner of the street, with Gold’s Pawnshop behind them and the library facing them from the other side of the road. Cold wind was playing havoc with their hair, Gold’s especially.

“Well, it’s Christmas,” said Archie. “I give all my friends ornaments for Christmas.”

“All your friends?” Gold repeated, eyes still fixed on the box.

The truth was Archie really didn’t have many friends, and it stung to think that Gold knew that. He gave an ornament to Marco each year, and beginning just last year, he’d started giving them to Ruby as well. There was no one else.

“We, ah … we don’t have a tree this year,” said Gold. He reached out to take the box but hesitated with his fingertips barely an inch away. Avoiding Archie’s eyes, he put his hand back in his pocket. “Neal and I … well, Neal’s with his grandparents this Christmas,” he said. The wind picked up, roaring in Archie’s ears. He took a step closer to Gold and bent his head, straining to hear him.

“His grandparents?” Archie said. “Your--”

“Milah’s,” said Gold. He grimaced, but it was only on his face for a second before he wiped himself blank again.

“So you’re just --?”

“I have business here,” Gold said, a crease appearing between his eyebrows as he gestured half-heartedly at the shop. “Someone needed to … watch the shop, and…”

“Well, come to my place, then,” said Archie brightly. Gold stuttered over his words, choked out a laugh and started to shake his head. “I’m always lonely on Christmas,” said Archie. “Really. It’ll be fun. You know those seasonal teas they sell for the holidays? Sugar cookie tea, and gingerbread tea, and candy cane tea? I have all of them. I’m not afraid to admit it, they’re addicting.”

“Dr. Hopper--”

“And you know, I can’t stand shortbread cookies,” Archie said, pretending not to hear Gold’s interruption. He savored the helpless look on Gold’s face as he spoke. “But I keep compulsively buying the Campbell’s ones because of the cute tins. And you know, Swiss Miss released these limited edition hot chocolate tins, with little polar bears on them, and of course I had to buy those, too. Along with just about all the seasonal candy I could fit into my cart.”

“Archie,” said Gold gently. Archie didn’t let him continue, though the use of his first name, for the first time ever, made his heart skip a beat.

“My house is freakishly festive right now,” he said. “I really went all out on decorating. _Hopefully_ , I said to myself, _if I’m surrounded by tinsel and fake snow and wooden reindeer, I can stave off the loneliness of spending Christmas alone_.”

Gold looked stricken.

“So, you know,” said Archie. “Some company would be nice.”

* * *

Gold showed up to Archie’s place with an expensive-looking bottle of champagne and a little box wrapped elegantly in silver paper.

“We’ll not watch _any_ Christmas movies,” he said warningly as Archie took the champagne from him. Gold stomped snow off his shoes and the tip of his cane before coming inside. “And I'm leaving as soon as you put on Christmas music.”

“Oh,” said Archie. He could hear “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” playing faintly from the living room. _Elf_ was paused on the TV. “I can’t make any promises,” he said. “Well, have you ever seen _Dead Poets Society_?”

Gold shrugged off his coat and narrowed his eyes at Archie. “ _Dead Poets Society_ isn’t a Christmas movie,” he said suspiciously.

“Exactly,” said Archie. It did have lots of snow, a Shakespeare performance, and a great deal of the same emotions Archie generally associated with Christmas, namely cozy depression.

Gold glanced down at Archie’s stockinged feet and then toed his shoes off, placing them against the wall. His typical suit had been replaced by a thick red sweater that didn’t match his blue argyle socks at all. He still held the silver-wrapped box in one hand, and he hesitated looking down at it, like he wasn’t sure when would be an appropriate time to give it to Archie.

“I’m making sugar cookie tea,” Archie said. He turned toward the kitchen and heard Gold following him quietly, only audible because of his cane, pausing once by the bookshelf in the hall. Archie was alone in the kitchen for a matter of thirty seconds; Gold appeared in the doorway and then stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on Archie’s kitchen table.

Archie had made sure to cover it with shortbread cookies, peppermint bark, and those cute little individually-wrapped truffles that he actually didn’t like that much.

“I’ve just walked into a dream I had when I was six,” said Gold, sounding stunned. He approached the table and looked at everything carefully and in turn, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. “I had a fever and for two days, I had vivid dreams of angels and fairies and…”

He picked up a Lindor truffle and examined it closely.

“And chocolate?” Archie guessed. A smile flickered across Gold’s face, but he put the truffle back down without opening it. “You can have one, you know.”

“Oh…” said Gold, with a tone that suggested he had an excuse stored up for this. But he didn’t finish the sentence, just moved away from the table and took a look at Archie’s teapot.

“Really,” said Archie. “I bought them to share.”

Gold shrugged, looking vaguely uneasy. He glanced around the room, possibly ruminating the dilemma of a proffered Lindor truffle. Then, “Did you know there’s a statue of a nymph in the White Mountain Forest out by Saco?” he asked. Archie blinked, taken aback by the sudden change of subject.

“Er, no,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Milah and I went, before we knew she was pregnant,” said Gold. The teapot started whistling and Archie jumped, looking around wildly for something to protect his hand. Gold procured an oven mitt out of a nearby drawer, as though this were _his_ house, and handed it to Archie. “When we got back to the car, she realized she’d lost her ring,” he said. “I went back to find it. I saw something large and white through the trees, so … I stepped off the path, and there was an old marble statue with a fountain full of stagnant water. Milah’s ring was there on the ground. But there’s no mention of a nymph statue in White Mountain Forest anywhere online; I’ve never met anyone else who saw it.”

Archie nodded without a word, his mind reeling a little. So far today, Gold had mentioned fairies, angels, and mystical statues in the woods.

“Did you read a lot of fantasy books growing up?” Archie asked, pouring them each a cup of tea. Gold looked affronted.

“I’m not _fantasizing_ ,” he said. Archie shook his head.

“No, that’s not -- I just meant … the way you described it. It felt like a fairy tale.”

Gold didn’t respond; he took his cup of tea from Archie and sipped it thoughtfully, lips curling a little at the taste. Archie took a drink from his own cup and understood Gold’s expression immediately; he hadn’t brewed it long enough. It tasted like a half-packet of Stevia poured into boiling water.

“I’ll make another batch,” said Archie, pouring his out in the sink. “Don’t drink that.”

“It’s fine,” said Gold. He took another sip and his face spasmed. “Really.”

“Well, torture yourself if you like,” said Archie. He put the teapot back on the stove and set the water to boil, then turned and grabbed a tin of cookies off the table. He headed to the living room; there was a sound of trickling water as Gold poured his tea down the sink. Archie plopped himself down on the couch and pried the tape off the tin. A moment later, Gold joined him, raising an eyebrow at the TV, which was frozen on a frame of Will Ferrell’s face.

“For some reason, I always thought it was Robin Williams in _Dead Poets Society_ ,” said Gold, startling a laugh out of Archie.

“Here,” he said, handing the cookie tin to Gold. He got down on his knees before the entertainment center and searched through his DVDs until he found the right one and put it in. When he stood up again, Gold was sitting on the couch with his legs crossed primly and his hands folded over the tin, shrinking as far into the corner as he could.

“You should eat some of those,” Archie said, sitting back down, a bit closer to Gold than was polite. His weight shifted the angle of the cushions, and Gold’s shoulder bumped against his.

“I’m fine,” said Gold. “Thank you.”

“No, really,” said Archie. He held his hands out for the tin and Gold gave it to him, watching from the corner of his eye as Archie opened it and tore apart the bag inside. He offered the open bag to Gold, who pretended not to see it. “Come on,” Archie said pleadingly. “ _I’m_ not gonna eat them.”

“I don’t care for them myself,” said Gold, but something in his tone told Archie this was a lie.

“When was the last time you ate?” Archie asked, taking a different route. Gold rolled his eyes.

“Because shortbread biscuits are known for their nutritional value,” he said.

“Gold, come on,” said Archie.

“Not to derail this fascinating conversation,” said Gold, “but did you know the invention of shortbread in 1754 led to the eradication of scurvy? Although the Royal Navy failed to include shortbread in their stores until 1785, leading to hundreds of deaths amongst their sailors.”

“You have a real talent for pulling facts out of your ass,” said Archie. He plucked a single shortbread cookie from the bag and held it out to Gold. “Take it or I’m never starting the movie.”

Gold took it with a scowl. “Don’t watch me eat,” he snapped when Archie refused to look away. Dutifully, Archie turned his eyes toward the TV screen, pressing play. Gold ate the cookie silently and didn’t protest when Archie put the entire tin in his hands again.

“You’re sure you don’t want any?” he said, ten minutes into the film. He still hadn’t touched the cookies.

“Yes,” said Archie without hesitation. “I really don’t like them. I just love the tins.”

“Normally--” Gold started, but he cut himself on and pretended to be engrossed in the movie.

“Normally what?” Archie asked. Gold refused to look his way.

“I’m used to sharing with Milah,” he said.

It wasn’t an ominous sentence, really, but it still opened up a pit of dread in Archie’s stomach. It had been three years since he first called Milah and Mr. Gold into his office over Neal’s violent story, but he knew things hadn’t really gotten better.

“How … how is she?” Archie asked, crossing his legs to mimic Gold’s posture. “Milah?”

“Fine,” said Gold. Archie mulled this over. There wasn’t a lot to work with.

“You two have any dates planned for when she gets back?” he asked. Gold bristled visibly, but when he spoke, his voice was even and calm.

“We stay at home, mostly.”

“Really?” said Archie, raising an eyebrow. “She always struck me as the type who liked to… I don’t know. Go to the ballet, or something.”

Gold huffed out a not-very-amused-sounding laugh. “Not really.”

Archie digested that. “Excuse me for a moment,” he muttered. He walked into the kitchen, scooped the Lindt chocolates into a glass bowl, and grabbed Gold’s bottle of champagne. When he came back in, Gold took a truffle as soon as Archie prompted him, and Archie couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

“So what do you two do?” Archie asked, settling back onto the couch. “Just...watch movies and cuddle?”

He struggled to open the bottle; Gold stayed silent, not watching Archie, but not watching the TV either. Archie pulled the cork out with his teeth, deafening himself with the pop. He poured champagne into two glasses which were certainly not designed for champagne-- one emblazoned with the Hard Rock Cafe logo, the other graced with a glossy etching of a cricket in long grass.

“What kind of TV does Milah watch?” Archie asked, handing Gold the cricket glass.

“Let’s not talk about Milah,” Gold said. He downed half the glass in one go.

“Okay,” said Archie, searching his mind for any other topic they could possibly discuss. “How’s Neal?”

“Let’s not,” said Gold again. Archie felt embarrassed, and as the actors onscreen marched through the woods looking for a cave, he had a difficult time forcing himself to pay attention or care.

It took Archie a good five minutes to come up with another, safer conversation topic.

“Did you celebrate Christmas as a child?” he asked. Gold sipped the champagne before answering.

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

It was a long time before Gold answered, but this silence felt different than the one they’d suffered through earlier.

“When I was three years old,” said Gold eventually, “we had a false tree in our apartment with rainbow lights, all in primary colors. My mother was there for a visit. My father was working, and he’d gotten a bonus the week before. So we had a space heater, and it was warm inside; my father had a little radio, and he played Christmas music. We would sit on the floor together with the music playing and just watch the lights. For hours, it felt like.”

Archie said nothing; the champagne was starting to go to his head a little, and he found it all too easy to imagine what it would have been like in Gold’s apartment.

“That was in Glasgow,” Gold said. “East End. That’s the only Christmas I remember celebrating, because my mother was there.”

“Did they get you any gifts?” Archie asked. A wry smile flashed over Gold’s face.

“An apple, a chocolate bar, and a bag of kettle corn,” Gold said. “I was ecstatic.”

Archie laughed. “When I was eight,” he said, “my parents got me a big case of Tic-Tacs for Christmas. I was obsessed with Tic-Tacs that year. They were my favorite food.”

“What flavor?” Gold asked.

“Orange, of course.”

“Oh, naturally,” said Gold. The smile hadn’t left his face, and Archie took a moment to appreciate the single dimple it brought out. “Did you celebrate often?”

“Every year, more or less,” said Archie. “Each year was vastly different, though. When I was nine, they got me five or six books, and my own portable record player, and a dozen other gifts I don’t remember. The next year, there were no presents, but my mom decorated the house. And the year after that, we didn’t decorate, but when I woke up on Christmas morning, they handed me a plastic grocery bag full of new clothes, from Wal-Mart.”

“Mm,” said Gold. “Well, I suppose it’s not the wrapping that counts.”

“Yeah,” Archie laughed. Gold stretched out his legs and slouched into the couch, looking up at Archie with another cheeky little grin.

“My birthday’s quite close to Christmas,” he said. “We never celebrated when I was -- well, when I was with my father. But when I was living with my aunts, and I started going to school to regularly--”

Archie raised his eyebrows, full of questions.

“--I was atrocious at English,” Gold said, his grin widening. “I must’ve been on the same level as a toddler when I was eleven. Honestly, I can remember the first time I ever read anything and actually understood it -- I was _eleven_ , and it was a Dr. Seuss book in the library.”

Archie didn’t want to laugh, but it was impossible to resist. Gold seemed to be the opposite of offended.

“I failed English my first semester that year,” Gold said. “Despite my best efforts, and a great deal of frustration on the behalf of my teachers. When my birthday came up, my aunts surprised me with an entire stack of books I was actually interested in.”

Archie made an inquisitive noise, and Gold waved his hand lazily. “You know, the sort of books all eleven-year-old boys are interested in,” he said. " _Boy-survives-in-the-wilderness._ _Boy-raises-raccoon-as-pet_. _Boy-makes-his-own-canoe_.”

“Ah,” said Archie. In all honesty, he wasn’t very familiar with that genre. As an eleven-year-old, he’d been more interested in Arthur C. Clarke and T.H. White.

“I hadn’t expected any gifts,” said Gold. “In fact, I’m not entirely sure I realized it was my birthday. But I didn’t have much time to bask in it. As soon as I’d seen the books, my aunts put them up on top of the fridge and said I couldn’t read them until I’d passed English.”

Archie sat up straight, unable to stop the offended noise he made. Gold chuckled at that.

“I literally can’t think of _anything_ more counter-productive,” Archie said, filling up his and Gold’s champagne glasses. “I mean, what was their -- what was their _plan_? What was their _reasoning_? ‘Let’s find books our nephew will want to read, and then not let him read them! _That’ll_ sure improve his reading skills!’”

Gold continued chuckling as he lifted the glass to his lips and took a drink.

“Trust me, I shared your anger,” he said. “At the time, I thought there was no greater injustice in the world. But, for better or worse, my English grades _did_ improve drastically after that.”

“Correlation, not causation,” said Archie firmly. “I just -- ugh. You won’t believe how much I want to go back in time and just --” He made a strangling motion with his hands. Gold raised his eyebrows at that, and Archie lowered his hands again, embarrassed. “Just -- I don’t know. Take the books off the damn fridge and give them to you.”

“It’s in the past,” said Gold, truly seeming unbothered by it. “I still have the books. I tried giving them to Neal, but … he’s not interested. He likes books about dogs who become astronauts, and vampire rabbits, and -- I don’t know -- swamp creatures attending elementary school.”

Archie laughed again. “Well, to be fair, you can’t really expect children to have good taste.”

Gold wrinkled his nose. “Nonsense. I’ve had excellent taste since birth.”

In unison, they looked at the nearly-empty bottle of champagne. Archie considered Gold’s statement and nodded.

“It _is_ good champagne,” he said. Gold sat up straight on the couch again with some difficulty and put his glass on the coffee table.

“Oh, I’m aware,” he said with a devilish smile. “I made it myself.”

“Oh, you did not.”

Gold put on a wounded look. “Wine-making is one of my many talents.”

“It literally says ‘imported from Champagne’ right there on the bottle,” said Archie, pointing at the cursive script on the label.

Gold waved this away dismissively and picked up his glass. “You know, champagne is the leading cause for environmental issues on Maury Island,” he said.

“You have a serious lying problem,” said Archie, trying not to laugh. He leaned forward to refill his glass and lost balance, falling sideways against Gold’s thigh. Suddenly, Archie’s laughter died and he felt the full alcoholic flush on his face. He pulled away again, straightening himself out. Gold was quiet and withdrawn again, his eyes stuck on the TV.

For the rest of the night, all Archie could think about was the warmth of Gold’s thigh against him when he fell.


	6. Though the Frost was Cruel

They took a break halfway to the Balto statue (or where the map said the Balto statue _should_ be). Archie struggled to find a dry spot for his book on the bench and eventually decided to leave it in his lap.

“Rainbow,” Archie said, pointing it out. Gold followed his finger and nodded, but he only spared the rainbow a cursory glance. His eyes immediately drifted toward the trees and then fixated on a young couple walking with a toddler between them, wrapped up in a puffy winter coat.

“They look nice,” said Archie, leaning over to get a better look.

“She looks like Milah,” said Gold. Archie looked again and found he agreed.

“Never mind, then,” he said. Gold smiled at that, but it was a strained smile, and Archie didn’t like it very much. The toddler in the puffy coat dug her heels in at the hot dog stand and refused to budge until her father scooped her off the ground.

Archie ruminated for a moment. It was time to play one of his favorite games.

“Have you ever had a hot dog?” he asked. Gold sighed; his breath was visible in the cold.

“If I say no, will you make me eat one?”

Archie eyed the hot dog stand and tried his best to lie, but he just couldn’t do it. “Yes.”

“Then I plead the fifth,” Gold said.

“You haven’t tried _anything_ ,” Archie said. “What about macaroni and cheese?”

“You’ve asked me that one before.”

Archie bumped his shoulder against Gold’s. “And has the answer changed?”

Gradually, a smile fought its way onto Gold’s lips. “No.”

Archie scoffed loudly enough that an old woman and her grey-haired pug both shot him offended looks as they passed by. “You made mac-and-cheese for Neal, though, when he was a kid. Right?”

“Begrudgingly,” said Gold. “With many a lecture on the health benefits, or lack thereof.”

“And you never tried it?”

Gold rolled his eyes. “Well, the dinosaur-shaped cheese-soaked noodles were certainly hard to resist.”

Archie nodded solemnly, maintaining his own faux-seriousness until Gold could no longer maintain his. Gold’s smile returned with a vengeance, and he ducked his head to hide it.

“Strawberry ice cream,” Archie said. “Have you tried that one yet?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Gold said.

“And?”

Gold chewed his lip a while, then cracked open his book with an air of resolve. “No comment,” he said.

“So you loved it,” said Archie.

“I didn’t say that.”

“It changed your life forever and you will always regret the years you spent not knowing the heavenly taste of strawberry ice cream.”

“It was okay,” Gold conceded. “Don’t you have a dated pop-psychology book to read?”

Archie held a hand to his heart and pulled his best wounded face. “Oh, I’m sorry, do you have a doctorate now? Because Oliver Sacks has a doctorate. Maybe when you get yours, we can discuss his ‘dated pop-psychology,’ but until then...”

“ _Jawohl, Herr Doktor_ ,” said Gold.

“Oh, don’t even.”  Archie jumped off the bench, trying futilely to brush the melting snowflakes off his wool coat. “Come on, we don’t have all day. At this rate, we won’t find Balto till May.”

Gold held out his hand and Archie grabbed it. As he pulled Gold to his feet, Gold smiled and said, “ _Marschbefehl_.”

“Alright,” Archie said, releasing Gold’s hand immediately so he could cross his arms. “What’s that mean? And exactly how much German do you know?”

“Just enough to drive you up the wall,” said Gold.

* * *

It takes a full half hour, but eventually, Archie persuades Gold to join him for a selfie next to Balto.


	7. When a Poor Man Came in Sight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second of 2 chapters posted today, since the first one is very short. 
> 
> 'Tis a flashback.

Gold didn’t reach for the box. He stared at it, eyeing the blue-and-silver wrapping paper, then blinked up at Milah.

“It’s not Christmas yet,” he said dully. With a short, nasal sigh, Milah turned the box so he could see the glossy cursive words emblazoned on the paper.

“Try reading it,” she said.

It was birthday paper.

“Oh,” Gold said. He still didn’t reach for the box, so Milah shoved it into his hands. Her smile was sharp and predatory.

“Forty-five,” Milah said. “That’s a big year.”

Gold returned her smile weakly.

“Well, open it. Don’t take all day.”

He pried the tape off with great care and set the wrapping paper aside. He didn’t tear it, folding it instead, and a spark of irritation entered Milah’s eyes, but Gold was careful nonetheless. He wanted to keep the paper.

When all was said and done, Gold was looking at a white shoebox he didn’t recognize from his closet, which meant it was new, which meant Milah had bought him new shoes. Gold looked down at the ones he was wearing -- fairly new, unscuffed, high-quality.

Then he peeled off the lid and suddenly his heart was in his throat.

“I heard you talking to Neal the other day,” said Milah triumphantly. “About how your aunts used to take you skating on the lake in winter.”

Gold smiled, but there wasn’t much emotion in it. He could see his reflection on the blades of the skates, and he looked sick.

“Try them on,” said Milah crisply. “See if they fit.”

“I’m sure they do,” said Gold. Milah’s sharp smile fell away.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said. “You don’t like them.”

“I do,” said Gold, but he didn’t sound convincing. “Of course I do. It’s just--”

“I thought we could break them in this evening, together, if you’re up for it,” Milah said. Gold’s mouth was dry.

“Milah,” he said cautiously, “I can’t skate.”

She stared at him, eyes cold, and Gold regretted saying anything.

“My leg--” he started. Milah cut him short with a curt, “Of course,” as she snatched the box out of his hands. She grabbed the neatly-folded wrapping paper too, before Gold could stop her, and crumpled it into a ball.

“Of _course_ ,” she said again.

“Milah,” Gold said. She ignored him, marching out of the room with stomps that made the floorboards tremble, and Gold jumped to his feet and hurried after her. The joints in his leg screamed at him, first because of the jump that jolted his ankle, then for the pace he set chasing after her. “Milah, please. It’s a wonderful gift--”

“Not wonderful enough, apparently,” said Milah, her voice flat. She shoved the wrapping paper deep in the trash can; she crossed her arms over her stomach, hugging herself, and for a moment she looked so vulnerable that Gold thought his heart might break. “Thank God I kept the fucking receipt.”

“Milah,” Gold tried again. He reached for her arm and she jerked away from him with a glare. Gold’s fingers snagged on the sleeve of her red designer blouse; he’d bought it for her last year, and for a moment Gold’s brain was taken over by the memory of how she’d smiled when she’d seen it. The image pulsed and spasmed in his mind.

“Jesus,” Milah said, and Gold was dismayed to find her shaking with rage. “Just -- I try to do something nice for you, and --”

“It _was_ nice,” Gold insisted. “It was thoughtful, and -- it’s just my leg --”

She smacked his hand away when he reached for her again. “Don’t,” she said. “And for God’s sake, don’t blame it on your fucking leg. Grow a pair, Ira. Tell the truth for once in your goddamn life.”

“What?” Gold said. Milah set the shoebox down on the counter, then shook her head and picked it up again. She headed for the coat rack by the door and Gold followed her like a helpless child. “Milah, what do you--”

“Just tell me you hate it,” Milah snapped. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t make excuses. Don’t try to spare my feelings, or whatever it is you think you’re doing.”

Gold felt the blood drain from his face. “Milah, I’m not lying. Really. I walk with a cane. I can’t go ice skating, it’s just not possible.”

She yanked her coat on, juggling the shoebox from hand to hand. When Gold tried to help her, she turned away from him entirely and faced the door.

“Milah,” he said, shoulders sagging.

“Save it.”

She didn’t slam the door. She shut it gently behind her, and that made Gold feel even worse.

* * *

When Neal came home before Milah did, Gold gave his best fake smile and went through their daily after-school rundown as best he could. Neal slouched his backpack off and dumped it on the kitchen table, grabbing the bread and lunch meat out of the fridge as he spoke.

“You know that self-portrait I was working on?” he said, making himself a sandwich.

“Yes,” said Gold.

“The one where I drew a scarecrow being torn apart by crows because I didn’t want to actually draw myself, and I figured Mr. Nielsen would be fine with it if I was appropriately dark and emo?”

“Yes,” said Gold. “In ink. It looked great.”

Neal smeared so much mayonnaise on his sandwich that Gold flinched. “Well,” he said, “I turned it in last Monday, and you know Mr. Nielsen always takes forever to get to my stuff. So he didn’t mention it at all until today.”

He paused to take a giant bite of the sandwich, using his fingers to mop up all the mayo that seeped out from between the bread slices. While he chewed, Gold said, “Was he angry, then?”

Mouth full, Neal shook his head. He swallowed with so much visible effort that Gold immediately grabbed an old Looney Tunes glass from the cupboard and filled it with water.

“No, he -- thanks --” Neal swigged from the glass, choked briefly on the water, and immediately took a year off Gold’s overall lifespan. “He called me over to his desk today, while everyone else was working. He lets me work on my stuff in the supply room by myself so I can concentrate. And he pulls up this picture on his computer, right, and it’s this pastel drawing of a scarecrow getting torn apart by crows.”

Gold nodded, eyebrows knit.

“Only it’s not _my_ drawing, obviously,” Neal said. “It’s way better, first of all, and it’s in color instead of black-and-white ink. And you know how my drawing was like, portrait-style, with the scarecrow sitting up and three crows coming at him from the sky?”

Gold nodded again.

“Well, this was landscape-style,” Neal said. He turned the sandwich on its side to illustrate his point, though this didn’t help much, since the sandwich was more or less square. “And the scarecrow was like, lying on the ground, with only one crow standing nearby and pecking at him. So I’m looking at it, not saying anything cuz I don’t know what he expects me to say, and the whole time Mr. Nielsen is just staring at me expectantly. Finally he says, ‘Looks kinda like yours, doesn’t it?’ And I think he’s like, accusing me of plagiarism or something. But it turns out it was a self-portrait _he_ drew when he was in _college_.”

Neal attacked his sandwich again, tearing off another worryingly-large chunk.

“So I got an A-plus, of course,” he said with his mouth full.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” Gold said, with a small but genuine smile.

“Kinda weird, though, right?”

“Not really,” said Gold. “You always get good grades in Art.”

Neal rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t say anything because he was too busy chewing. Suddenly, staring at Gold, his eyes narrowed, and it took Gold awhile to realize why -- he’d fixed his smile in place without thinking about it, the way he always did when he was trying to pretend he was fine.

Gold wiped the smile away immediately and took advantage of Neal’s full mouth.

“I have to make a phone call,” he said. He turned away, pretending not to hear Neal’s muffled sound of protest, or to see the finger he jabbed in Gold’s direction. Gold scaled the stairs as quickly as he could and locked himself in his and Milah’s bedroom, praying that Neal’s teenage stomach would insist he finish the sandwich before going after his dad.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Gold took out his cell phone and called Milah. The phone rang three times before going to voicemail; she’d set it that way, and Gold had always privately disapproved of how short the time-frame was. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he called again. With each successive ring, he could feel his throat constricting more and more.

This time, he left a message: “Milah, call me back. Or text me. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

He hung up but left his cell phone face-up on the blanket next to him, just in case Milah called back right away. He breathed in deep through his nose and let it out in one long sigh. He did this again and again, until he no longer felt like he was vibrating from impatience.

He glanced at the phone. No calls, no messages. Carefully, he went to his last text conversation with Milah, reading over the messages from three days before.

From Milah: _you grabbed the wrong book_

From Gold: _Sorry. Omw to library. What’s the title again?_

From Milah: _forget it_

Gold winced as he read them. So it had only been three days since their last major argument. He’d made a library run with Neal the day before, and Milah asked him to bring back the new J.D. Robb book. He knew he’d remembered it right, because he’d written it down as she said it, and he’d brought the note with him to the library to make sure. Still, he hadn’t mentioned any of that when she said he got it wrong. It hadn’t felt like a good idea.

Gold sighed again and checked the time. It would be getting dark soon. Most likely, Milah was at the bar, but it was possible she’d gone to a friend’s house instead. He debated the merits of looking for her and could only think of one -- it would show her his contrition for the fight earlier, and even if Milah reacted poorly to the sight of him, she would appreciate it more if he looked for her than if he stayed home.

Downstairs, he heard the distinct noise of Neal opening the refrigerator again, then rifling through the cupboards.

He figured he should probably go grocery shopping, too.

* * *

“Heading out,” said Gold, breezing past the kitchen just as Neal opened a bag of potato chips.

“Where--?”

“Grocery store,” said Gold. He pulled on his coat and had to bite his tongue to prevent himself from asking if Neal wanted to come along. He hoped Neal wouldn’t notice the lack of an invitation; it wasn’t like he could bring him along to the bar, looking for Milah. “Text me your list, okay?”

“Sure,” said Neal. He dug his hand into the chip bag in a manner that seemed strangely contemplative. “Did you and Mom get in a fight?”

Gold turned to face the door as he buttoned his coat, the same way Milah had turned to avoid looking at him as she stormed out earlier. He grimaced, trying to think of a good way to evade the truth without technically lying.

“She gave you your birthday present,” Neal guessed, voice flat. Gold looked over his shoulder, hoping his face was blanker than it felt.

“Yes,” he said.

“Skates,” Neal stated.

“Yes.”

“So, let me guess,” said Neal. He paused to eat a potato chip; Gold suspected he did so for dramatic effect, not out of hunger. “You pretended to like it, but she saw through you, because the whole reason she bought the skates in the first place is cuz she knew you couldn’t use them, and she wanted to start a fight over your imaginary ingratitude.”

Gold hesitated, unable to think of a good protest. “It’s getting dark,” he said eventually. “I’m going to see if she’s at her book club. That’s all.”

“And by ‘book club,’ you of course mean ‘bar.’”

Definitely time to change the subject, then.

“Will you be alright for dinner?” asked Gold. Neal shrugged one shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t just eat the whole bag of crisps and call it a meal,” said Gold with a pointed look. Neal rolled his eyes.

“I won’t. Dad, just don’t go after her. I mean, what’s the point? She starts fights just cuz she knows how much it hurts you, then she stays fake-angry at you till you apologize for whatever _she_ did. And I’m not saying she _definitely_ chose today to start a fight because Christmas is in five days and she hopes you’ll feel bad enough to buy her something expensive, but I _am_ saying it looks pretty likely to me. It’s not worth it.”

Gold pretended not to hear. He counted the cash in his wallet and then handed Neal two twenties.

“If I’m not back by seven, you can order Chinese,” he said. “Or a pizza.”

Neal took the money sullenly and shoved it into his pocket without bothering to fold it. “She’s just gonna yell at you in front of everyone,” he said. “When you inevitably find her flirting with strangers at the bar.”

“Text me your grocery list,” said Gold. Before Neal could respond, he was out the door.

* * *

Milah wasn’t at the bar.

Gold stood shivering in the parking lot, his breath visible. The sun was down, the sky especially dark as clouds blocked out the stars. The only light around came from the screen of Gold’s phone.

No missed calls from Milah. No messages, either, unless you counted the two from Neal, which said _Doritos plz_ (hardly a grocery list, Gold thought) and _Got you some hot n sour soup_.

Gold snapped his phone closed again and sighed, turning his face up to the sky. He’d waited inside for ten minutes, just in case the bartender had missed Milah and she was hiding in the bathroom or something. It was a long shot checking this particular bar in the first place -- Milah hated it, she had a grudge against one of the regulars, and she said the bar food sucked anyway -- but he’d checked all the others in town earlier, and she hadn’t been in any of them, either.

He squeezed his eyes closed. Behind him, he heard the squeaky chain of a poorly-maintained bike.

“Smoke?” someone asked him. Gold turned wearily and saw one of the men from inside, perched dangerously on the edge of his bicycle seat. It took him a moment to comprehend what he was being asked; he reached in his pockets and pulled out a half-full box of cigarettes he’d rolled himself earlier that week. The man looked at them, but didn’t move to take one.

“No,” he said, voice slurred. “I mean, you wanna smoke with me?”

He held up his right hand, clutching a lit joint between his fingers.

Oh.

“I’m fine,” Gold said. “Thank you.”

“I’ll feed you,” the man offered. Gold said nothing, his thoughts already turning back to Milah and her whereabouts. “C’mon, man, I don’t wanna smoke alone.”

Gold sighed and took the joint. Up close, the smell was overwhelming, and he was briefly plunged into a sense-memory of visiting his father once at age twelve, the shitty studio apartment full of smoke.

He passed the joint back. The man on the bike lost his balance as he took it and had to slam one foot down hard on the ground.

“You’re the guy who’s always arguing with his girl,” the man said. “That brunette. The one who’s always at the Rabbit Hole.”

Gold’s horror at being recognized solely for his public fights with Milah was drowned out by his relief that someone here knew her. “You’ve seen her?” he asked. “Today, I mean?”

“Not here,” said the man. “Over at the Hole, yeah. Earlier today. Her and Killian.”

 _Killian_. Gold’s heart dropped all the way down to his shoes. When the man offered him another pass at the joint, he didn’t hesitate.

“You know where she went?” he asked, feeling sick.

“She cheating on you?”

Gold couldn’t bring himself to answer that, even to say no, so he pretended to cough instead, until the man lost interest and just answered Gold’s question.

“Maybe the rink,” he said. “She had skates.”

Well, of course she did. Gold hadn’t thought to check the rink, and he still wasn’t convinced it was worth a look, but it didn’t seem polite to say so.

“Thanks,” he said. He handed the joint back and turned on his heel. The man shouted after him, but Gold pretended not to hear. He was trying desperately to remember which one was Killian. He remembered a guy Milah had been hanging off of one night with a beer belly and a beard who must have been nearly seven feet tall, and desperately hoped it wasn’t him.

Gold reached his car, parked down the street, and briefly rested his forehead against the wheel. Beside him, sitting in the passenger seat, was a paper bag from Clark’s filled with vegetables of questionable freshness and one small bag of Doritos. Should he put it in the back? If he did find Milah, she’d definitely take offense to find out he stopped for groceries before looking for her. If he didn’t find her, then he might forget to take the groceries in when he got home, since he wouldn’t be able to see them anymore.

Rather optimistically, Gold placed the bag in the backseat, where Milah wouldn’t be able to see it when she got in. He considered his options. The only place open this late, other than the bars, was Granny’s Diner, and he’d popped his head in there earlier this evening. Milah hadn’t been there. It was possible she _was_ there now, he supposed.

He glanced at his watch and figured it wouldn’t hurt to check the rink on his way there.  

* * *

He sat in his car, fingers numb on the wheel, unable to feel his face. He had no clue what he looked like right now, but he hoped to God it wasn’t anything like what he felt. Like the world was shattering around him.

The rink was closed, the lights out, but there were two people on the ice anyway. They must have climbed over the fence. He recognized Milah even from this far away -- was too familiar with her silhouette and the way she moved to _not_ recognize her -- but it took him a good deal longer to recognize the man.

He was tall, but nowhere near seven feet, and he didn’t have a beer belly. When the moon came out and Gold could see better, he made out messy black hair, a terrible goatee, and a ridiculous amount of eyeliner. Light glinted off a silver ring in the man’s ear and Gold let his head fall against the steering wheel with a muffled groan.

Killian, apparently, was half Milah’s age and, from the look of him, made all his money from a shitty local rock band.

Great.

Gold lifted his head and watched as Killian and Milah spun across the ice. Both of them were clumsy -- it was clear they hadn’t grown up skating -- but he could see them flashing smiles nonetheless, using every slip and stumble as an excuse to cling to each other, Killian’s hands on Milah’s waist, hers on his shoulders.

As Gold watched, one of them tripped and both fell to the ground. They lay together -- in the darkness, he couldn’t tell where Milah ended and Killian began. He heard a burst of combined male-and-female laughter through the window.

He sucked in a deep breath, started his car back up, and drove away.


End file.
